Definite objects in the wild. A converging evidence approach to scrambling in the Dutch middle-field

Description

This thesis is about the placement of definite objects relative to adverbials in the Dutch middle-field. Direct objects can surface on either side of an adverbial, or in between two adverbials, as demonstrated by Vanden Wyngaerd’s (1989) example in (1) with the definite object de directeur ‘the manager’ Introduction Scrambling in the Dutch middle-field Adverbial hurdles in Dutch scrambling Freedom in the Dutch middle-field Contributing to the discussion Adverbial hurdles in Dutch scrambling Introduction Empirical approaches to Dutch scrambling Experiments Experiment set 1: Structural position Experiment set 2: Scope sensitivity General Discussion Conclusion Scrambling, focus sensitivity, and discourse restructuring Introduction Theoretical background Experiments A fill-in-the-blanks experiment A speeded judgment experiment Discourse relations in Dutch scrambling Conclusion Topicality and anaphoricity: A sentence completion study Introduction Theoretical background Terminology Neeleman and Reinhart Schaeffer Erteschik-Shir De Hoop Van Bergen and de Swart Predictions A sentence completion experiment Participants Materials Procedure Analysis Results Anaphoric topics and (non-)anaphoric foci Permanently available topics General discussion Conclusion Linguistic judgments in 3D Introduction Judgment data and task instructions The reliability of judgment data Linguistic judgments in 3D The influence of task instructions Scrambling in the Dutch middle-field A sentence judgment experiment Participants Materials Procedure Results Discussion General discussion Conclusion OV/VO variation and scrambling in historical Dutch Introduction Variation in Dutch object placement OV/VO variation in historical Dutch Scrambling in Present-day Dutch Relating OV/VO variation and scrambling A corpus study of historical Dutch Results Information structure and OV/VO variation Information structure and scrambling Discussion An analysis of Dutch object placement An anti-symmetric account of object placement Shifting the border between information domains Conclusion General discussion A summary of the empirical results Chapters 2 and 3 Chapters 4 and 5 Chapter 6 What we can learn from these results Discussion about certain adverbial hurdles Capturing and handling wild scrambling References Appendices Appendix to Chapter 2 Stimulus material for Experiment 1A Stimulus material for Experiment 1B Stimulus material for Experiment 2A and 2B Appendix to Chapter 3 Appendix to Chapter 4 Topics and foci Permanently available topics Appendix to Chapter 5 Grammatical taboo item set Scrambling item set Appendix to Chapter 6 Nederlandse samenvatting (summary in Dutch) Variatie in de volgorde van woorden Bijwoordelijke barrières Vrijheid in het Nederlandse middelveld De opkomst van scrambling in het Nederlands Convergerende evidentie: Theorie én empirie Dankwoord (acknowledgments) Data management Data storage during research Reuse of research data Curriculum vitae List of publications